Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, spoke with the President of Argentina on a variety of topics, including drug control, space flight and Bitcoin. According to President Mauricio, the British entrepreneur expressed interest in investing in Argentina.
According to the president’s Facebook page, the president “was very interested in the talk as Branson, plus entrepreneur in areas related to new technologies, such as space flight and use bitcoin is entrepreneurial in humanitarian issues.”
Macri was elected in 2015. As a former civil engineer, his interest in space flight and bitcoin makes sense. He is Argentina’s first democratically-elected non-radical or Peronist President since 1916 and previously held position as Head of Government of the Buenos Aires from 2007 to 2015.
Macri comes from an upper-class background and gained recognition in 1995 after becoming President of Boca Juniors, among Argentina’s most popular soccer clubs. In 2005, he created the right-wing electoral party Republican Proposal (Propuesta Republicana), known as PRO.
As one of numerous investors in BitPay, Branson has a history with Bitcoin. The Virgin Galactic founder also held his own digital currency summit on his private island and represents one of the first high-profile investors to enter into the Bitcoin space.
In September, Branson noted his belief that, despite debate over the Bitcoin block size, the technology was working, he told Bloomberg. Branson has been such a proponent of the digital currency, he wrote on the Virgin website:
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I have invested in Bitcoin because I believe in its potential, the capacity it has to transform global payments is very exciting. It has been obvious to us all for quite some time that people aren’t satisfied with the business-as-usual approach adopted by the major payment networks.
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